Even if you have quality products, exceptional customer service, a thorough loyalty program, and availability on the top ecommerce platforms, your cannabis dispensary may still be falling short of its true potential. So, what’s the solution? In short: customer segmentation, targeting, and positioning.

That’s right, you might be doing everything right, but if you’re missing the segmentation, targeting, and positioning model (STP model), your dispensary might not be at its full potential because your advertising strategy isn’t specific enough. That is, you might have an advertising strategy, but it might not be reaching the people or groups of people that would be most interested in your dispensary or product.

This is where the STP model comes into play. In short, the STP model is an audience-focused approach for communicating with and advertising to potential and established customers. In this, the STP model can help you not only better communicate and advertise to your existing customers and customers segments, but it can also help you find new customer segments and niche markets that present your business with new or different opportunities for sales and growth.

In this article, we’ll be talking about this STP model and how it can help you gain new customers, communicate better with existing ones, and help your business grow. In this, we’ll talk about each part of the model separately and how they all work together to help you form an efficient and effective advertising strategy at your cannabis dispensary. We know that all of this isn’t as easy as it sounds, so at the end we’ll talk about how with the help of springbig, it can be (almost) as easy as it sounds.

So, let’s start with the first step: Segmentation.

Segmentation

Segmentation is the base of the whole process because without customer segments, you can’t target specific segments and you can’t position yourself in relation to your main target segment or segments.

In short segmentation refers to the process of separating your customers into smaller groups based on their similar traits that they share such as interests, average spend, age, and more. Doing this will help you more effectively promote specific products and services to the customers they would appeal to the most.

But how do you segment customers? In short: Data. In any industry, customer data is your best friend when it comes to creating a targeted marketing strategy because data is what you’ll be using to segment your customers. To acquire data to help you segment your customers, your options are either asking your customers directly via survey, using software that tracks your customers activity, or using third party data in tandem with some of your own. In doing this some specific customer traits you’ll want to look out for are…

• Product preferences
• Preferred location (if you have multiple)
• Personal characteristics such as birthdays and the day they joined your dispensary
• Customer spend
• And visit frequency

But like almost everything in life, doing this is much easier said than done. Not only do you need the right tools to get the job done right, you also need to make sure that you’re collecting data in compliance with state and federal law. If you aren’t then you could be risking lawsuits and big fines. But luckily, springbig can help you with all of these challenges.

Let springbig help you segment your customers and stay compliant

That’s right, springbig has the tools you need to efficiently and compliantly collect customer data as well as utilize that data to execute an effective, customer-centric loyalty program and marketing strategy at your cannabis dispensary.

With springbig’s 360 permissions, you’ll be able to rest assured that you’re compliantly collecting customer data so that it can be utilized in your marketing strategy. With differing regulations from state to state, and federal regulations such as the TCPA, staying compliant is difficult, but with the compliance tools 360 permissions offers it doesn’t have to be.

With this, collecting customer data and using it to target customers has never been easier with springbig’s autoconnects. Springbig’s autoconnects allow you to automatically target specific customer segments based on interests, actions, and time. These include essential segmentation factors such as age, birthday, product interests, overall spend, visits and visit frequency, and days since last visit among others. Each of these factors can be used to create automated text message marketing campaigns that are specific to each factor and customer segment.

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Targeting

Now that you’ve got you customers segmented, you have to figure out how to target them, and which segments to focus the most effort on. While you’ll most likely have a number of different customer segments, to start you’ll likely want to focus on one or just a few as to not get overwhelmed. That’s not to say that you should disregard other segments, but to be as effective as possible you can’t put all your effort into all of them at once.

So, what should you be considering when deciding which segments to focus on? One of the biggest things you should take into consideration is the size of the segment, because the bigger the size of the segment, the bigger the sales. With this you should also be considering things like how the segments relate to each other, which segments will be most profitable, how easily you can reach them through your available marketing channels, and potential barriers to marketing to each segment.

Positioning

The last step in the STP model is positioning. Market position refers to the process of framing your brand so that it is appealing to your target customer segments and so that your customers associate your brand to be in the same category as other popular brands in the same niche. In this, it is important that you focus heavily on what separates your brand from the rest.

Doing all of this will allow you to partially control how people relate to your brand and what people associate you with. That is, positioning helps you separate your brand from competitors, portray the value of your brand, and make your brand memorable.

In positioning your brand, it is often helpful to work backwards. That is, you should look at your brand from a customer’s perspective and position yourself in that way. Tying this in with segmentation and targeting, understanding what each segment deems most important in informing their purchasing decisions and loyalty and determining where you stand in relation to your competitors will allow you to successfully position your brand relative to each segment.

Recap

In short, if you’re not already utilizing the STP model, then your dispensary’s advertising strategy isn’t fully optimized. In this, Segmenting your customers based on things such as their interests and how much they spend, targeting specific segments that you deem to be best for business, and positioning your dispensary relative to other dispensaries are all key. But with that being said, none of this is as easy as it sounds.

Luckily, springbig is here to help with the data and advertising tools you’ll need to segment and target your customers effectively. That means all you’ll need to do is position your dispensary appropriately and you’ll be on your way to better sales and customer engagement.